Meet the new WineDirect

Welcome to our new website! We’ve recently made some big changes to offer you a more seamless DTC experience, including folding Vin65 into the WineDirect brand. Got questions? Learn more here, or

Before you go

Download our free ebook, Break Into the Top 20% of Wineries.

Informed by our own proprietary data from over 1,500 wineries, our popular ebook takes a close look at the wine industry’s most effective direct-to-consumer sales operations and provides actionable advice for every winery—because we believe all wineries deserve to know how today’s consumers think and how to maximize their potential.

VIN65 is now

As of November 2nd, Vin65 is now WineDirect. We've made this change to offer you a more seamless DTC experience. You'll see that our branding has changed, but our commitment to providing you with best-in-class DTC software remains the same. Got questions? Learn more here, or

3 proven ways to make your wine images work for you online

Here’s the deal: The average person’s attention span in 2015 was 8.25 seconds. People no longer desire to read an entire article; they simply want the basics. Visual content like images and videos allows brands to communicate a valuable amount of information within this timeframe.

1. Opt for unique, relevant images

Now that images an essential part of brand storytelling, stock photos are now inadequate. To represent your brand, you want images that are attractive, engaging, sharable and most importantly, unique. Professional, commissioned photography along with original graphic design have proven to be the most effective in setting brands apart and communicating the brand messages, both on your winery's social media and when choosing your winery website design.

(Source: iStockphoto.com)

That said, professional, commissioned photography is easier said than done. 65.4% companies in a survey done by Digiday and Chute cited that the lack of time and resources as the largest obstacles to making it happen.

To solve that problem, companies like Outshinery create stunning and consistent product photography and videos entirely online. Brand managers can now get professional unique images for wineries with a few clicks and cut out the shipping, shooting and scheduling entirely.

2. Use high-quality, easy to load images

Large image files can make your website load at snail speed. Not only does it discourage people from sticking around and discover your products, it can also lower your search engine ranking.

Not all image files are created equal. One built for printing purposes would not load easily online because too heavy. One webapp we highly recommend is TinyJPG/TinyPNG. This tool reduces your file size as much as possible, without forgoing on quality. Best part? It’s completely free!

(Source: Outshinery.com)

Can you spot any difference at all?!?

3. Create properly labelled images

Let’s get a bit techie here! Underneath the images, there are invisible HTML code that help Google “see”, understand and index your images. The more you take advantage of these elements to tag your images, the better chance there is for them to show up as results for appropriate queries. For HTML starter, these elements include atl tag, title tag and the file name. Take a look at the example below:

These are just a few suggestions on ways to make your images work best for you. When in doubt, outsource! There are a number of services out there that gives great optimized visual assets for less time and effort than you might think. This is an investment that goes a long way from converting visitors into buyers. Well worth it regardless of whether you are updating your current website or starting fresh with a new winery website design.